Idle musings

Those of you who have heard of the latest box-office clash of Raees vs.Kaabil are sure to have heard comments along these lines,regarding the former - "Shah Rukh Khan has never looked better!" and "This is the Shah Rukh we've been waiting for!"I would agree with both views.Baniye ka dimaag aur miyaanbhai ki daring - Raees is a sight for sore eyes(even if they are not exactly sore).Rahul Dholakia's practiced hand at direction combined with K.U.Mohanan's cinematography makes for a mass entertainer backed by a solid story. Shah Rukh impersonates the role of a tactical businessman with elan,wheareas Nawazuddin Siddiqui is impeccable as the police officer,Majmudar. Majmudar's relentless pursuit of Raees makes for a thrilling chase - especially since both men are extremely talented at their jobs.While Raees ceaselessly evades the law's grasp(with style,mind you),Majmudar's repeated relocations do not deter him in his attempts to keep Gujarat '...

I fail to understand 'modern' humanity. We ceaselessly ignore things that come easily to us,like love and mutual support for our fellow beings, and try to be sophisticated.We believe we are in a higher plane of existence,living a better life, while all we do is just exploit each other and our habitat.The result?Increasingly, more and more people across the globe experience unrest,physically and mentally. Less than a  century ago,it was perfectly normal or rather, humane, to want to help someone in trouble,to do manual labour, to offer emotional support for an ailing heart,respect for nature - the things that originally established a society of humans in this world - real coexistence.But these seem alien to at least some of us today.To be humane is considered ridiculous,unnecessary.Nature was created to be recklessly plundered by man.And then you conduct experiments and arrive at conclusions - junk food is unhealthy,selfishness breeds bitterness and depression,erosion of value...

"I n the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy,growing heavy for the vintage ." John Steinbeck writes with a deep understanding of the common man's suffering, during the years of migrancy, when people from states like Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas were tractored out of their lands,and were forced to moved West, in hopes of  settling down among the pretty orchards and cotton fields of California.Instead, what greeted them were the hatred of the natives, scarce job opportunities and terrible living conditions.Steinbeck's Nobel- and Pulitzer-prize winning 1939 novel is an enduring classic, which portrays how the inherent goodness in man is brought out in times of collective crisis, and how man's will can fuel revolutions,leading him to live on in spite of setbacks in life.A truly touching,beautiful work,which will stay with you forever.The past year 2016 came to a meaningful end for me with reading The Grapes of Wrath .Here's hop...

So many men,just dropping dead,disappearing amidst all the smoke and rubble.Fire spitting out of guns, burning men alive.Ceaseless shots fired.The very ground exploding under grenades.Fires,billowing smoke,and death everywhere.Men whose very intestines had been blown out.Men who had lost limbs.Decaying bodies being fed on by rats.Worms eating away at the eyes of a dead man.Countless bodies piled away on top of each other. And then came a man who faced such inhuman violence, sans weapons.He enters the bleak battlefield as a combat medic,with nothing but a helmet and medical supplies.He keeps going back there to save men fallen in battle,the only thing keeping him going being the need to save, "one more".He saved 76 of his fellow soldiers in the the Battle of Okinawa,during World War II.The Conscientious Objector - presumed to be a coward, a thin "cornstalk" to be protected from high winds - became the bravest man to serve the US military,to such an extent that the ...